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About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in jo... (More)

About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community. (Hide)

Food fight: Palo Alto vs. San Francisco

It's a question I often ask myself, especially in light of the non-stop influx of well-known SF places opening up on the Peninsula. I tend to think not.

In my experience, some of these San Francisco outposts have actually not tasted quite as good down here (Tacolicious, to be exact, was a total letdown when I first went). Maybe I'm picky; a food snob; restaurants have off days. Who knows.

Though the great San Francisco restaurant migration is exciting for Peninsula foodies, present company included, it also leaves one wondering: Will Palo Alto be taken over by these chain transplants? What about the mom and pops, the individual, non-chain, non-franchised, unique and special places? There are plenty of places of that nature in Palo Alto that have been around for years, but few new ones coming into town. (I was pleased to hear about Scoop Microcreamery, an ice cream shop that opened on University Avenue a few weeks ago and is owned by a couple from New Jersey who call themselves "Mr. and Mrs. Scoop." Sidenote: The ice cream is sublime. Get the bourbon with salted caramel.)

His two cents: what Palo Alto lacks, is "small, passionate, chef-owned concepts," which are pushed out/kept away by the "restaurant expansion culture" that has been dominating the city of late. I totally agree.

I'd be interested to hear what others think. What's your take on the Palo Alto food scene? What about Mountain View, Menlo Park, Redwood City? Will Palo Alto (or the Peninsula's) food scene ever compete with San Francisco's? Does it need to?

Posted by another foodie,
a resident of Green Acres,
on Oct 21, 2013 at 7:36 pm

Palo Alto food scene is far from being able to compete with San Francisco. There are probably less than 5 restaurants if not 3 that would be at the level of an average restaurant in NY or SF. Palo Alto has many great things, but a world class cuisine is not one of them.

Posted by resident,
a resident of another community,
on Oct 21, 2013 at 9:08 pm

I live in Palo Alto. I enjoy the restaurant scene in San Francisco so much better simply because of the tremendous variety up there. There are only a handful of restaurants in Palo Alto I enjoy visiting regularly, but even then I don't want to visit the same ones every week because they start tasting the same after a while. In San Francisco, there are so many different cuisines represented (by quality restaurants) that I could easily eat something completely different more than once a week for a year or more.

Elena - I wonder if some of the difference is the lack of an available employee base. I remember reading a while back that the founder of Calafia commented on how challenging it is to hire people in Palo Alto.

Elena - I wasn't thinking of the chefs, rather all the support staff that a good restaurant requires. If you know that rents are expensive and staff is difficult to hire, you might not choose that location for a restaurant. Just wondering if that comes into play.

Note especially Frank Klein's comments predicting shake-out of inexperienced restaurateurs in a current climate of peak restaurant rental prices. (So sharp a peak, a popular downtown-MV Chinese restaurant closed this year after its lease came up for renewal at three times the previous monthly rent.)

20 years ago, people often complained online that Palo Alto, for all its appropriate environment and residents who could afford to eat out, conspicuously lacked a restaurant scene. Stars was the famous high-end place, and didn't last. PA had long been better known for humble local-grown chains and neighborhood cafes (Stukey's, Ken's, Round Table Pizza -- a Menlo Park invention). That has changed considerably: neighborhoods like University and California ave's and the totally re-born Town & Country near Sranford now feature independent, innovative restaurants with range and variety.

Posted by Elena Kadvany,
a resident of another community,
on Oct 22, 2013 at 2:39 pm

palo alto resident, Max - Very good points; I appreciate you commenting. There's a lot more at play than just good food or attracting talented chefs. There's increasingly high rents (in both Palo Alto and San Francisco), city ordinances to get through, challenges hiring staff, etc. Makes it pretty clear why all these already successful, well-established SF places can easily make the move down here.

To anyone else interested in the topic: the Chronicle article that Max posted is worth a read.

Posted by Max Hauser,
a resident of Old Mountain View,
on Oct 22, 2013 at 3:22 pmMax Hauser is a registered user.

Also, "palo alto resident" raised a good point that I too have heard from restaurateurs and even restaurant employees in Santa Clara County.

Because of its extremely high restaurant count in a compact geography (several hubdred thousand restaurant seats in a city of only 47 square miles, just twice the land area of Palo Alto), SF has a uniquely large and experienced pool of restaurant workers to draw on, many of whom choose it as a career.

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